Posted on 12/23/2006 4:00:01 PM PST by Valin
PJM is making public on this website for the first time the report by the Inspector General’s office regarding Sandy Berger and his theft and destruction of classified national security documents — named in the report as, “The ‘W’ Intelligence Files.” This document was obtained for review by Pajamas Media.
Berger, as the former National Security Adviser for the Clinton Administration, was granted sole access to these documents in order to vet them prior to their being turned over to the 9/11 Commission and congress. As this file shows, he used this position of trust to take a number of documents and destroy several.
[Editors’ Note: The ramifications of this report are profound when placed against the questions of who knew what and when did they know it in the Clinton years prior to 9/11.
As is common with all such documents, the pages have been heavily redacted following a security review. Still, enough facts remain to give readers a clear picture of Berger’s access and actions leading up to the crimes for which he has pled guilty.
Pajamas Media will be examining and investigating the leads and questions that arise from this document in the coming days. At the same time we recognize that our resources in this regard are limited.
Therefore we are making this document public and ask that it be reviewed by knowledgeable people to see what information can be gleaned from the facts that remain visible after the security review.
A few questions emerge on the first reading for which answers would, we believe, be telling and valuable to the public’s understanding of the deeper roots of 9/11.
Among these are:
What was role of Omar Bashir, President of the Sudan, and his relationship to Berger and President Clinton during the days when he offered to cooperate in the capture of Osama Bin Laden?
What was in the ten to twenty pages of notes Berger is believed to have taken out of the reviewing room against regulations during his first session?
Who was the person or persons Berger contacted during the numerous “private cell phone calls” he was allowed to make during his active review of the classified documents?
Exactly what was in the documents Berger stole from the archives, some of which he has confessed to destroying?
The list can be extended as one reads the OIG report carefully. We are confident that by releasing this document in this manner we can call upon the networked intelligence of the Web to find within these pages not only more questions, but the beginnings of the answer to the central mystery of this entire incident: “Who was Berger looking to protect from the 9/11 Commission’s inquiry? Was it just himself and his role in our National Security in the Clinton years? Or were there others that the documents would either embarrass or implicate? ]
Powerline
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016294.php
December 23, 2006
Pants, socks, trailer, trash: The OIG report
Over at Pajamas Media Richard Miniter has posted the OIG Sandy Berger report here. Richard's editorial note on the report focuses on the pertinent questions:
What was role of Omar Bashir, President of the Sudan, and his relationship to Berger and President Clinton during the days when he offered to cooperate in the capture of Osama Bin Laden?
What was in the ten to twenty pages of notes Berger is believed to have taken out of the reviewing room against regulations during his first session?
Who was the person or persons Berger contacted during the numerous “private cell phone calls” he was allowed to make during his active review of the classified documents?
Exactly what was in the documents Berger stole from the archives, some of which he has confessed to destroying?
The list can be extended as one reads the OIG report carefully. We are confident that by releasing this document in this manner we can call upon the networked intelligence of the Web to find within these pages not only more questions, but the beginnings of the answer to the central mystery of this entire incident: “Who was Berger looking to protect from the 9/11 Commission’s inquiry? Was it just himself and his role in our National Security in the Clinton years? Or were there others that the documents would either embarrass or implicate?
Your comments are invited here at Power Line Forum.
JOHN adds: I've read the report; it's generally consistent with what has been in the press over the past year, although it contains Berger's confession in fuller and more dramatic form than I think I've seen reported.
It seems clear that the main focus of Berger's concern was the After-Action Report that was done following the capture of the Millenium Bomber around the beginning of 2000. Here is the main thing that puzzles me about the OIG report: is it possible that Berger was destroying the only copies of these documents? And if not, how could it possibly be worth his while to go to the trouble and risk of destroying them?
In any normal document management system, the documents would be scanned and numbered. Electronic files would be maintained in various locations and no one would work with anything except redundant paper copies. It sounds, however, as though the National Archives may have been working with an antiquated system. When employees there first began to suspect that Berger was stealing documents, they had no easy way to keep track of the documents, so they hand-numbered them sequentially. This later enabled them to prove that documents were missing.
So it's possible, I guess, that the Archives really didn't have duplicates, or, more likely, that duplicates or electronic files existed somewhere but were not easily retrievable.
That's a question I'd like to see whether anyone can shed more light on: were these unique documents, and if not, what benefit could Berger gain by destroying them?
The custodians of the records at the National Archives were pretty sure they had seen Sandy Berger purloining some of the records from their archives. But they were either so shocked at the action, they dismissed it as just too unlikely to be actually happening, or the presence of Sandy Berger projected such an aura of having the right to just go ahead and do what he was doing, the staff was too intimidated to confront him with the facts of what he appeared to be doing.
Miniter's on the case. Cool.
WhyTF DO REPUBLICANS SIT ON THEIR FAT INCUMBENT ASSES OVER THIS KIND OF BLATENT, DISGUSTING, TREASONOUS ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE !!!!@#$%^$#@@#
Clicked and bookmarked...44 pages.
"the staff was too intimidated to confront him with the facts of what he appeared to be doing."
Arkancide will do that to you.
The Berger report
http://pajamasmedia.com/upload/2006/12/Berger-report.pdf
Same reason they sat on the Barrett Report.
Thanks... I will pour over that later tonight.
THIS, ALONE, SHOULD BE THE GROUNDS TO GUARANTEE THAT HITLERY NEVER MAKES IT BACK TO THE WHITE HOUSE!!! C'MON YOU FAT, LAZY, YELLOW F'ING REPUBLICAN BEAUROCRATIC PILES OF DECAYING FLESH IN A TAXPAYER FUNDED COMFY CHAIRS, GET YOUR ASSES TO WORK FOR THE ONLY AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT REALLY CARE ABOUT AMERICA!
But they were either so shocked at the action, they dismissed it as just too unlikely to be actually happening,
I know just what you mean. No one sane would ever suspect a high level member of the Clinton whitehouse of ever doing anything wrong.
I would like to know more about the corruption and complicity of the Bush Justice Department in the matter of Berger's prosecution and plea agreement. The corruption of the Bush Justice Department is as brazen as Clinton's, and this could be due to Bush "holding over" too much of the crooked Clinton scum. But even if true, that's a lousy excuse.
Wouldn't Berger's plea agreement have had a provision that he "come clean"? My frequent 'Law and Order' viewings lead me to believe that getting caught in a lie after the fact can nullify a previous plea agreement. Was all of this information in the OIG report known by the "prosecutors" and the judge at the time of Berger's plea agreement? If so, then maybe the Bush Justice Department is even more corrupt than Clinton's.
I never thought that could be possible in a million years..
Because they remember getting roasted over impeachment and it turned their spines to jelly.
"WhyTF DO REPUBLICANS SIT ON THEIR FAT INCUMBENT ASSES OVER THIS KIND OF BLATENT, DISGUSTING, TREASONOUS ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE !!!!@#$%^$#@@#"
This is the reason republicans did so well at the polls....
no balls...no voice.....nothing but surrender monkeys to the lib/dems and msm!!!!
Paging the folks running the GOP....
700 FBI Files the Hillery retains(don't ya wish you knew what was in THEM)!?
Hey--hey. The 64 Million dollar question.
The President started out by trying to be friendly to the outgoing administration, he refused to go forward with anything that looked like an investigation or to question anything that happened during the Clinton years.
My theory is that he acted this way in the hopes of getting bi-partisan actions in the Congress. Well that hope was short lived. As time wnet on and he discovered more and more ha just allowed it to be ignored. I believe the President made a mistake by allowing the fraternity of Presidents to look out for each other to sway him on his duty to the American taxpayer.
I dont give the Republican House and Senate any benefit of the doubt at all. They were and are Cowards. Which is why they lost the House and the Senate.
All of these mistakes were compounded by Clintons washington mafia that closes ranks to protect this white trash excuse for an ex-President. berger was tried an given a light sentence for only one reason. To protect him from Double Jeopardy.
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